What Motivates You? (With 10 Sample Interview Answers)

There is a always a driving force that motivates us to perform better and keeps us going. It depends upon the circumstances of an individual and situations in which he or she spends their lives. The variety of motivational events is tremendous and is unique for every individual. It is a common interview question, wherein the responses generated helps an interviewer to evaluate the personality and mindset of a candidate. Hence, it should be prepared in a serious manner by reading several sample answers.

Three Ways To Efficiently Answer This Question

1) Support Your Reason

Reasons for motivation are limitless, and people nowadays can get motivated even by an inspirational video or movie. Whatever, the reason maybe, always support your answer with any one of the following:

• A real-life scenario encountered by you:
  • During your academic career, that is in school or college or
  • During your professional career, that is your internships, training, or a full-time employment
• Situations/Circumstances in which you are living, like poverty, deprivation, etc.
• Your personal traits, attributes, desires, and natural instincts such as:
  • Willingness to explore
  • Challenging attitude
  • Competitive nature, etc.

2) Dream or Desire Becomes Motivational Factor

Everyone has a dream. If not a dream, a desire to achieve something. If not a desire, we all at least set goals and objectives in life. These dreams, desires, or goals have the ability to motivate you and can qualify as your answer to this question. By giving such a unique and personal response, you will thoroughly impress your interviewer.

3) Never Respond In Negative

By saying that you do not like motivations in life or you just don’t have any, will not help your cause in either way. This simply means that either you are trying to avoid this question or you are underprepared for this question. Both the scenarios can severely hurt your selection chances and you might lose out on your dream job, no matter how excellent your academic records are or how valuable your work experience is.

Ten Best Sample Answers To Read

Sample Answer One

To be honest, It is my personal instinct of being competitive and my desire to beat my peers, that motivates me to get up every morning and work really hard at my workplace. I always want to advance my career and become successful in life by contributing to my organization with my skills, perseverance, and knowledge.

Sample Answer Two

Different individuals have different mindsets and they tend to get motivated by different things. I am a progressive person. I love to progress and move forward in my career and life. This feeling gives me a direction or reason to work with high intensity and perform tasks that are tough and challenging.

Sample Answer Three

I have always been a person who loves to take on challenges. I remember, how hard I worked, during my school days, to win a challenging debate competition. Challenges are something, that motivates me to come out of my comfort zone and perform tasks in a manner, which is unique and peculiar to mine.

Sample Answer Four

Being a middle-class person, I aspire to become wealthy and rich. This possible only if I work hard at my workplace and advance my career. A well-earned promotion would enable me to fetch a fat paycheck and earn hefty pay packages. This way, I will be able to fulfill the dreams of my kids as well as my parents.

Sample Answer Five

When you work hard in life, you tend to get success and success has the power or the ability to satisfy you immensely. It can give you ultimate happiness, and bliss, which will make you a complete person. A successful person always remains happy and leads a life with all the material means. This is my motivation, that forces me to push my boundaries and work hard.

Sample Answer Six

The sweetest satisfaction in this world is when you get appreciation from your colleagues as well as your seniors. My desire to get recognized among wide arenas of professionals and entrepreneurs, motivates me to perform my daily tasks and duties with utmost passion, zeal, and labor. This simply pushes my limits and forces me to come out of my comfort zone.

Sample Answer Seven

Positive motivation has the power to make you a respectable and dignified man. My motivation is to work in a team and lead it. This is a feeling which I am carrying with me since my college days. I remember an instance when I led my team from the front in a basketball match. My desire to lead and guide people gives me the energy and power to perform proficiently in almost all situations.

Sample Answer Eight

Every individual has his or her own motivational factor. For me, it is the desire to get widespread recognition and fame for my work and duties. This is a very strong desire of mine, that motivates me to work hard at my workplace and pushes me to take initiative and perform tasks in an efficient way.

Sample Answer Nine

In my humble opinion, motivation is a burning desire that prohibits you from even sleeping at the night. I have such a desire. Since I belong to a lower middle class family, I have a monetary dream. I want to make/create a corpus of $750,000 in the next 5 years. This is possible only when I work hard at my office and perform duties in such a way that impresses my seniors. Post this, I will get a promotion and an increased salary, which will contribute immensely to achieve my financial goals.

Sample Answer Ten

When you have a desire to learn new things, nobody can stop you from that. And if you don’t have any such desire, no one can help you to learn new things. I belong to the first category. Learning new things, methods or procedures motivates me to look into the uncertainty and desire for the unachievable. My willingness to learn motivates me to keep working hard even in the most precarious and negative situations.

Conclusion

Every individual in this world is inspired and influenced by something. This becomes the primary reason for a person to work hard and achieve his or her individual goals and objectives in life. An interviewer wants to know what motivates you or drives you to work hard so that he can judge, whether or not you will be a perfect fit or match for the work ethics and working procedures followed by the organization. Hence, answer in a smart way post proper preparation. If you like our articles then don’t forget to share them with your family and friends.

References

1. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2012.00525.x
2. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0749-742320160000019004/full/html